eBusiness Weekly
Kudzai M. Mubaiwa
This past week, an identifiable local financial institution hosted a full day National Entrepreneur Forum event that ran under the theme of promoting financial inclusion through small business financing and innovation.
Small business owners from all the ten provinces were in attendance and the organisers made provision for a thousand of them in a programme that was headlined by a guest speaker from South Africa, one Vusi Thembekwayo.
He was supported by several other local speakers who gave talks, pitches or contributed perspectives on the theme through panels.
Some very important issues were raised and the day had a mix that ranged from motivational through to managing people, marketing, financing, disruption, innovation, and customer care.
The following is a quasi-proceedings report with some of the highlights and how they impact the present day Zimbabwean entrepreneur.
The first presenter gave a fairly motivational talk with the popular phrase start small, think big, but he added a third dimension — scale fast.
In my view one who is starting out in our environment really has no option but to start small as Zimbabwe is a dynamic place for enterprise — you would not risk starting at large scale without proof of concept.
Thinking big is certainly a phenomenon practiced by many, in fact it has been noted that no matter how small an enterprise they own, many of our people will as soon as possible on starting acquire a lofty title and print the necessary business cards to affirm that, though there may be no work at all on the ground!
The aspect of scaling fast though would make the difference as the idea being pushed was that one who is in the market must dominate their sphere of influence as soon as possible.
We already have living examples of Zimbabweans who started at a simple level but are now known as solid business owners and job creators. Many of them have stayed flexible and have ensured their business models change as technology also changes.
To get all this done there would be need to bring on board the best resources: the right people. Emphasis was made on ensuring, as a business owner, that you hire the best people — and these would be taught the value of performance versus attendance. Making this the new culture in a business is no small task as many are schooled to believe they deserve their wage or salary as long as they have been at work on time all twenty-two working days in a calendar.
The business owners were advised to let go of the thought pattern that those who put in long hours are necessarily the best employees, but to note that output and quality is the issue.
These “internal customers” would need to be those you identify as having vision, not just sight and would be able to grow with you.
The presenter passionately reiterated that revenue models take time, in fact in some huge markets such as the United States there are inventors of innovations that are widely used but cannot as yet generate income — like WhatsApp.
The point was this should teach us to be patient as small business owners, but more critically those working in small to medium business support services of any sort must be patient, including in their capitalising or other funding structures; and appreciate that most business requires time to grow to their optimal level.
In countries that have better ease of doing business indicators, they take longer than we do to get a business soundly running, thus with all our national economic issues, we should brace ourselves for at least three years of consistency before expecting those we support to build meaningful enterprises.
Innovation was a core sub theme and this was touched on by most of the presenters as they continually warned local entrepreneurs to ensure they stay abreast of the facts and accept that one day they may need to be disrupted (by a secondary party or themselves) before they become obsolete and inconsequential. It was flagged that the future is a competition of innovation and serious entrepreneurs would require strategies to future proof one’s business.
Marketing was another core sub theme and successful panellists in the medical and security fields weighed in on the conversation sharing how they made it and/or missed in marketing in their field.
One regretted having spent so much money for their marketing budget in early days, as they were able to see that they didn’t get the engagement or responses they anticipated, whilst some seemingly mundane, grassroots activity like word of mouth, networking at event or a WhatsApp advert made greater impact.
The room agreed that social media was a critical tool to be used in this digital age and was yet to be fully exploited. Financing was the final sub theme and a mixed panel of business serving organisations were represented — private sector, civil sector and those in between.
Rather than whine about the amounts available, attendees used this opportunity to hammer the need for grant or loan providers to step back and review funding mechanisms to ensure they match their economic activities cycles.
In turn the financial institutions insisted that small business owners learn to send through detailed, well researched, quality business plans that are bankable.
Those who attended with no on-going projects or projects that failed in the past, but had good intentions to restart, where also challenged and pointed in the right direction to get them moving. It was taught that when looking for markets one must check for fragmentation — where there is no consolidation by any single player that space will remain open.
Entrepreneurs were also encouraged to check for inefficient use of assets — with the clearest example being of old school taxis that had to sometimes cross the entire town to give you a ride versus the flexible Uber model that ensures the nearest free vehicle gets to you at a lower cost and in shorter time.
New entrants were also schooled on picking places with huge market size, for example China, such that any percentage of sales will guarantee profitability, emanating from a base with good numbers and therefore higher probability of making it. Finally, new entrants were advised to investigate where there are large customer experience gaps and no matter which brand has slacked, move in quickly.
This perhaps was one of the most popular takeaways of the day — that small business can do very well because it is nimble, agile and fast!
Many of those present committed to be relevant to their customers, responsive, reliable and make life convenient for them.
A day proved too little, but the weekend allowed many of the one thousand attendees to reflect on the many power points shared and act to reorder their businesses.
We look forward to more of such events that demystify business to our people and invest in practical learning.
It is heart-warming when big business invests in the growth of smaller enterprises in this way, for the two always have co-existed and can mutually benefit.
Feedback: Email – [email protected], Twitter — @kumub
